prologue

Remember on Monday, when i posted a long ramble about how everything i do sucks and i don't know how to do it better so i'm just going to keep doing it? Here's a draft of the prologue to the book i was whining about, written sometime in my freshman or sophomore year of college. If this is ever published, you can consider this a teaser. If, as is far more likely, it stays on my flash drive until i die, it may be less of a teaser and more of an incomprehensible ramble about fictional fairy racial conflicts. So without further ado, i present to you: AVIS.

It

 all started with Nareena. Or rather, with Rhynesh. Or perhaps it would be most accurate to say that it started with Fox. Actually, let me start over.

         

It all started with racial prejudice, which started the same way that it always does: from nothing. In this case, the two races in question were fairy races: the Kevarths and the Spencers. Like most humans, both races were an even mix of good and bad qualities and attributes, and they were totally indistinguishable from one another in every way that mattered. In fact, both races were the descendents of the same family. Yet each race seemed to feel that there were huge and irreconcilable differences between them.

The one really empirical difference is that the Kevarths had a slightly reddish tint to their skin, and the Spencers had a slightly bluish tint. But even this difference was pretty meaningless; being fairies, they were able to alter their appearances with a glamour whenever they desired.

          Eventually, there was a war. The Kevarths won, though it was a very close thing, and the Spencers were enslaved.

          Reality has a way of being shaped by perception. Over the centuries, differences between the races began to develop. The Kevarths, as the ruling class, developed a taste for power and cruelty. Eventually, every instinct for good disappeared, and the Kevarths were only able to find pleasure in the suffering of others.

          But Nature always finds a balance, and if there is no balance to be found, she creates one. As the Kevarths lost their goodness, the Spencers lost their evil. They became the first, and possibly only, purely good creatures in recorded history.

          Once in a very great while, a Kevarth would take a fancy to one of the Spencer slaves. Of course, no lasting relationship could ensue, but sometimes there were children, children who inherited an equal mix of good and bad qualities. The children would also have a purple tint to their skin, but most would adopt a permanent glamour of red or blue, depending on which race they identified with. If there had been a middle class in Masroe, it would have been composed of the mixed races; instead, most mixed fairies chose to display blue skin and ended up as slaves, albeit high class and expensive ones.

          One day, something very unusual happened. King Fox married a Spencer. The Queen, Rihana, bore him a son, and they named him Rhynesh. However, the outcry from the Kevarth population was so great that King Fox feared for his throne – and his life. Being a Kevarth and therefore devoid of any capacity for selflessness or true affection had his wife executed. Shortly after, he married again. His second wife, Addison, was pure Kevarth, and notorious for her hatred of Spencers. The king wanted to make sure that this marriage was above reproach. She, in turn, bore a child to Fox, a daughter named Nareena.

And that is where it all started.